In the early 1990’s my homeland of Yugoslavia was torn apart. What was once a country of unified civil people working together hand in hand to build a strong country became a blood bath of terror. I am not writing to inform people of the corrupt history- rather yet to tell the personal journey of the authentic American dream, the victim’s view of war. My family lived in a village near the town of Knin, a region heavily populated with Serbs, which is in present day Croatia. For centuries they worked and lived on this land. Their blood and sweat is rooted deep into the soil. Their memories, laughter, and tears remain within the walls of destroyed homes. My father worked as an engineer, but was a man of many trades. He built our home from the ground up, every nook and cranny marked with his craftsmanship. My mother worked as a secretary for a large company, while taking care of my siblings and I. Every dollar was attained through hard work.
We are all given a deck of cards in life, here was our hand. It was August 4, 1995, the country had been in war for several years, but tonight there was an extra eerie crisp feel to the air. That was the night my family’s life would change forever. My father heard through word of mouth that the Croatian soldiers were coming into our village, burning down houses, rapping women, kidnapping children, murdering people and taking everything and anything valuable in sight. He had to make a life altering decision for my family, and quickly. We had 15 minutes to pack up a lifetime full of memories, shove them into plastic suitcases, sealing them with the tears of our broken hearts. Every item that was left unpacked would become a stranger of the past. At the time my mother was five months pregnant with me, and my siblings were six and three. The moment we stepped out of the house and into the packed car, we had been branded for the rest of our lives, a new title- immigrants.
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For the next two years my parents relied on God’s grace and their hard work ethic to provide for my siblings and I. The struggles they faced were unimaginable. My mother, eight months pregnant with me, was laying on a gymnasium floor they had made into a camp for refugees. Malnourished and unable to seek proper prenatal care she only prayed to give birth to a healthy child. My father slept outside on the gravel under a truck. He feared being separated from his wife and children, and hid from being drafted back into the army. My grandma who had come with us, was separated from her husband who stayed back home. She was left wondering day and night if he was alive, or dead in a mass grave unable to be ever reunited again. My sister a six year old child who was supposed to be coloring with crayons and playing with dolls, instead was helping my father file papers with the American Red Cross. My brother, a child who was supposed to be careless and free, was stealing extra food. After eight months of sleeping on the hard basketball courts that were packed with people just like us, we had been offered a place to live. It wasn’t the plaza hotel by any means, but to us it was a generous gift. Every time we thought we’d hit a wall, God threw down a ladder of new opportunity and hope. Upon applying and anxiously waiting for months and months we received a letter. My father opened it tears streaming down his face, kissing the letter as he hugged his family and said “this is our chance, this is our chance at the American Dream.”
The day we could have only dreamed of finally arrived, August 4th, 1997. The plane was so crowded that if anyone had packed even an extra shirt, it would have exceeded its maximum weight limit and would have been unable to take flight. At the time, I was a baby nursing on my mother’s lap, unaware of the immense fear, thrill, and happiness that was surrounding me. To this day I still say that I was an immigrant with a first class seat to America.
Upon landing in America, a whole new set of obstacles revealed themselves. If you could picture a big mess of yarn, intertwined, twisted, knotted and never ending, that would be the best image to illustrate the endless struggles that laid ahead. The world my parents grew up in, lived in, and thrived in, no longer existed. At the ages of 43 and 34 they had to relearn nearly everything they had ever done in life. The language barrier made simple tasks very challenging. Grocery shopping became a picture game. My parents who are both educated and valued individuals were working low end jobs, doing anything and everything they could to provide. No job was too dirty. No uniform was too embarrassing. No overtime hours were too long. One knot at a time, the jumbled pile of yarn started to get untangled. I will never truly know if things started to get better or if my family just kept working harder and harder.
In 2007, after multiple fees and endless hours of studying, my parents had passed the naturalization test. Now we had a new subtitle to our name, not only immigrants, but Citizens of the United States of America.
Today my father is a well-respected man working as a mechanic in a Steel Mill. At the age of 64 he is working more overtime hours than regular work hours. My mother is a housekeeper at a hospital and continues to work her second job as an amazing mom. My grandma has returned to live in Croatia, but forever remains in our hearts. My sister, who is my biggest role model, started second grade in America not knowing a word of English. She graduated high school as valedictorian and went on to receive her Doctorate in Pharmacy from Duquesne University, graduating with honors. My brother recently graduated with his Bachelors in Science of Nursing from Drexel University. As for me, I am pursuing a degree in Accounting at Kent State University.
I was too young to remember, but I am old enough to appreciate all of the struggles my family had faced. I can’t thank my parents enough. I can’t ever repay them for the life they have given me. My father had told me, “they can steal our land, our home, our friends, family, and all the things we worked hard to attain but they will never be able to take away our love for God and knowledge.”
I wrote this article to acknowledge every family whose home was taken away during time of war. Whose life was stolen right before their eyes. Whose brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents, and friends had died. Whose struggles and lives WILL BE remembered. My country still has scars left from this recent war, wounds that cut so deep they will never be completely healed. Images that still come back in HD quality. Too many times the struggles of immigrants are underestimated, undervalued, left unappreciated. My family’s story is just one of many hundreds of thousands of refugee stories. Every story marked with a different chapter, a different struggle, but many highlighted with the same dream. A chance to start over, an opportunity at the American Dream.
